Instrumentation: Baritone Saxophone and Trombone

Duration: 17’

Commissioned by: Duo Signal

Year: 2021

Programme notes:

"Vers l’essence de l’écoute" is a clear example of the aesthetic path I have been following in recent years. I have been taking away many of the complexities and musical density that was inherent to my previous work, in order to look for the essence of what constitutes my musical language.

The compositional process of "Vers l’essence de l’écoute" began with my fascination with the concept of Ma in Japanese Noh theatre. Ma could be very roughly defined as blank space, interval between actions, sounds or words; a pause that has content in it. I soon discarded the idea of Ma as an articulatory element for the piece; nevertheless, the conceptual implications of it are still underlying.

"Vers l’essence de l’écoute" is symbolically and poetically a process of surrendering to silence, to pause, to void. The first minute and a half of the piece is illustrating this process: both players are required to play a nearly constant sound, either by the use of circular breathing or by finding strategies to make the sound seamless. Music is pushing the players to breathe as little as possible. But, in the end, breathing is going to be needed; pause is therefore inexorable.

That reluctance of accepting pause, void, but in the end needing to surrender to it, is what articulates the dramaturgy of the piece and all its symbolic content.